Archive October 2015

What do drones, Amazon, Walmart, Google and Facebook have in common? It appears a lot, with all four ramping up their efforts to use drones, but not all in quite the same way and in this week’s regular catch up with Hong Kong Radio 3 ‘sPhil Whelan we chatted about the future of dronesand discovered a strong Hong Kong drone connection.

Both Walmart and Amazon have applied to the USA’s FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) asking permission to trial drone delivery and with a Walmart store within 5 miles of 70% of America’s population and Amazon continuing its online onslaught, both have much to gain if they can innovate the logistics chain and have drones deliver.

Google is also looking at home delivery drones through Project Wing, but it’s most recent application to the FAA comes from Project Titan, a project started by an aerospace company they bought last year, that wants to use drones to provide internet access and data harvesting around issues including deforestation.

It will take some time for the FAA to resolve if and how to allow Walmart and Amazon access to the sky, but Facebook and Google’s projects using far fewer, less obtrusive, drones being used for internet provision and eye in the sky services may receive approval sooner.

Aside from its commercial use, private drones are on the rise.

And here’s the Hong Kong connection – 90% of all drones sold around the world started life in Shenzhen and are shipped out of Hong Kong with 70% of those built by DJI.

FlyCam HK, Hong Kong’s largest drone retailer, claims there are 5,000 drones being flown around HK and not surprising when you look at the laws, or lack of them, that allow any drone weighing 7 kilograms or less to be flown without a licence.

There’s growing excitement around these flying robots and what their capable of and next week we’ll look at the industries most likely to have and benefit from drones first, but first have a listen to this week’s segment and then share your thoughts on the future of drones (15 minutes 07 seconds).

The world’s biggest social media site has opened its user’s profiles to greater scrutiny from complete strangers and potential employers – a move one expert says will spark anger.

Last week, Facebook announced it would allow users to trawl through the estimated two trillion public posts on the site using word searches in a similar way to Google.

Never before has the site allowed this. Users are sure to be worried about privacy, an expert told The New Daily.

“If they’ve pushed the public button, which most people have done by default, then it becomes totally searchable,” tech futurist Morris Miselowskisaid.

“There’s going to be a knee-jerk reaction, that’s for sure. It will be negative. Most people are still very, very concerned about having their materials found by others.

“I’m sure there’ll be immediate debate about security online and all that kind of stuff.”

‘Trapped in Facebook’

Mr Miselowski said Facebook was clearly trying to keep users inside its website for longer.
“They are definitely looking to build an eco-system,” he said.
“It would make sense that [Facebook is] looking to close that eco-system and to maintain it. The less you need to go outside Facebook, the better it is for them as a corporation.”
He predicted that digital assistants like Siri and Google Now will increasingly become our default method of search, rather than websites like Google.
Because we spend so much time on Facebook, these voice-activated programs might learn to trawl the social network more and more. A search feature gives Siri and Google Now more reason to visit.
“If it [Facebook] is the default place and our ‘tech-knowledgy’ knows that’s our preference, then that’s where it will go,” Mr Miselowski said.
“The more that eco-system can feed us, the less likely that tech-knowledgy will look elsewhere and we’ll become entrapped in that space, which is the desire of every marketer on the planet.”How to try it out
To access the new feature, go to Settings and select Language. Check that your language is set to: English (US).
Type your desired search term into the search panel and select the magnifying glass option.
For better results, put your search term in quote marks (“funny memes”). This will tell Facebook to search for those exact words.How to protect yourself

Mr Miselowski recommended that users immediately perform a “vanity search”.
There is a way to stop that regrettable post resurfacing.
Type your name into Facebook’s new search feature and experiment with key words to see what others might find. Remove anything worrisome by changing the privacy setting of that post from ‘Public’ to ‘Friends’ or ‘Only Me’.
“Going forward, adjust your privacy settings so that you’re comfortable with who is receiving that information. And then go back to rule one: don’t say anything you wouldn’t say in the marketplace,” he said.‘Not too much to worry about’
Another expert was less concerned about the potential for privacy breaches – or the possibility that the social network would subsume the wider web.
“Facebook would be extremely limited if it did not have this ability,” Bond University tech expert Dr Marcus Randall said.
“I don’t think that Facebook could every replace the rich and diverse information stores that are available from the web.
“Like any service, it is only trying to retain its user base and be attractive to other potential users.”

In response to You Tube’s announcement to launch a premium service called You Tube Red, Rose Donohoe of The New Daily and I chatted about the why, where and will we of this new service:

YouTube will soon ask users to hand over their credit card details to pay for a new premium service.

Starting in the USA next week and rolling out worldwide soon after, the website – which has been free since 2005 – will charge subscribers $US9.99 ($A13.85) a month for YouTube Red.

The premium service will offer ad-free streaming and the ability to play videos offline, as well as keep videos running in the background while you use other apps.

But a spokesperson for Google – which bought YouTube in 2006 – said the “same ad-supported, free version … won’t be going anywhere”.

“Paid offerings are simply a way to offer interested users additional choice in how they can view their favourite videos on YouTube,” the spokesperson said.

News of the premium service coincided with the announcement of YouTube Music, a music streaming app available soon.

In the meantime, YouTube Red subscribers will also get access to Google Play music, leaving other music streamers Spotify and Apple Music behind by offering both video and music streaming for the price of one.

Currently, Spotify is the market leader for paid music subscription, with 20 million paying users.

But business futurist Morris Miselowski said if anyone could knock Spotify off its perch, it was YouTube.

On Wednesday 21st October, time travel will be proven as Back to the Future 2’s Marty McFly hurtles into 2015 all the way from 1989.

What will he find, what will have changed and what will he think of the changes he sees?

Despite the fact we don’t quite yet have hoverboards and DeLorean flying cars, fuelled with rubbish turned into nuclear fission there are lots of things that are predicted in the 1985 film that have come about.

Here’s the stuff that’s come true:

Flat screen TV’s

Video conferencing

Fingerprint biometrics

Artificial Intelligence

Voice activated and responsive technology

Hydroponics

Brain controlled / wireless video games

Handheld tablets

Wearable technology

Holographic displays

Visual Displays

Drones

Bionic Implants

and here’s some that’s almost come true:

Hover boards – although there are some versions of boards that might be called hover boards

Self-lacing shoes – although Nike took out a patent on this tech and is suspected to release a version for next week’s anniversary

Turning garbage into fuel – we can do and have done it for 30 years, but not with cold fusion

Pepsi Perfect -although Pepsi is said to be releasing a limited edition for next week

Automated fuelling is being trialled now by Tesla and others

Stationery exercise bike at cafes – but we are very sports and health conscience

Flying cars – we have them but just can’t use them

Fax machines @ all phone booths – this if of course past tech, but it did infer an internet of sorts would be in existence

Rejuvenation masks

No surprise, I love this movie. It’s a seminal Hollywood moment that changed my career and life and nostalgically I’ve travelled the last 30 years alongside Marty McFly and the DeLorean into the future.

It’s also one of the movie’s that sparked our curiosity about what’s next and is the source of the two questions I get asked most often – where’s my hoverboard and where’s my flying car?

Although we haven’t exactly seen some of the technologies and lifestyles depicted in the film, we do have strong evidence that some of what was shown then, is around today.

It also shows how wildly our life changes in such a short period of time.

In 1985 it would have been impossible to believe that the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union would collapse. South Africa apartheid would end. A terrorist attack would fell the World Trade Centre. That 4 billion and growing smart phones would inhabit the world. That snail mail would have given way to digital mail. That the word Google would be used so readily in everyday conversation. That sharing our most intimate thoughts and actions online in social media would be so ordinary. That cures and treatments for many diseases including AIDS would have been found and that China would be on target to become an economic superpower.

There’s a huge interest in this topic and I’ve had lots of media requests, so have a listen to some of the interviews I’ve already done to see where we’re up to with the “nearly” list and happy Marty McFly day for Wednesday

We’re all futurists, constantly making choices and decisions about tomorrow and then working hard towards that vision and possibility.

But what if our version of tomorrow is slightly off, more based on yesterday than tomorrow, or simply fails to take into account new technologies, changing habits, growing possibilities and new business horizons.

This is the conversation I’m having everyday in boardrooms, clients offices, on stage and in the media, but it’s not often I get to take you behind the scenes and share the what, how, why, when and where of tomorrow and have it widely available.

I teamed up recently with Business BluePrint, an incredible recently launched 24 hour live streaming small business channel that in itself is a remarkable innovation offering recorded ready access to some of the best minds and thinkers on the planet, to record a live version of one of my most often requested presentations, looking ahead to 2025 and learning the lessons of tomorrow and profiting from them today.

Lots in this 57 minute recording, but some of the future roads we travel in this recording include:

Why the future of your business starts right now!

What innovation really is and how you can quickly, and for no budget, grab hold of it and make it work for you

The biggest demographic and business changes we can expect to see over the next decade

The 5 questions you can ask to better see the future

Which industries are going to rise and which are going to disappear

How to use technology to remove friction and increase engagement

What is the sharing economy and what might it mean to you

The age of big data and why it is relevant for small business

The internet of things and connected spaces

The rise of robotics and which industries will be effected and why

Augmented and virtual reality

What is artificial intelligence (AI) and when it will take hold

How to be on the right side of technology advancements in business

and then we take a quick tour through some of my best foresight and business planning tools around how to find your next great business innovation and how to wrestle it into life and profit.

This recording is live today only – Tuesday 13 October 2015 – at 9: 05 a.m., 11.15 a.m., 01.27 p.m., 3.38 p.m. and 5.49 p.m. (all times are AEST).

I’d love you to watch it and then share what tomorrow is going to bring you and what you’re going to do to make sure it does.

Swifter, higher, stronger is the mantra of most sports professionals and with the Australian AFL and NRL football grand finals behind us, it’s a great time to ponder on what sport may look like and hold for us in the near future and in a series of media interviews this week that’s what I set out to do.

I’m always drawn to George Orwell’s quote “serious sport is war without the bullets” and when you look at the time, energy and money spent by devoted fans and those that run and benefit from it, I think it still holds up.

But where is professional sports headed?

Firstly every bit of research I can find says that recreational, amateur and professional sports are here to stay and on the increase, but as with everything it’s all getting a future twist on it, so what can we expect?

The Athletes

Tomorrow’s professional athletes, unlike their counterparts of a few decades ago, will continue to be full-time career athletes, training full-time mentally and physically, but added to this historical duo, is the newest kid on the block digitally.

This starts with a whole raft of wearable devices that monitor, record and analyse every action, intake and, expenditure that the athlete makes throughout their day, their training and their playing.

This new raft of limitless raw real-time athlete specific data, is being monitored by techknowledgy that’s constantly scrubbing every morsel of information out of it, comparing it to past activities and other players performances in attempt to gauge future performance and interventions and training that can be put into place now to achieve optimum outcomes later.

We can expect to see an average of 9 of these devices on-board every athlete in the next few years, some of them worn, but most of them built-in to the clothing, shoes and other apparel with each device sending their unique performance perspective to the athletes ecosystem of advisers, coaches and health professionals and even the fans themselves.

But wait there’s more, as all this information meets virtual realityallowing athletes to put on a virtual headset and whenever and wherever they are jump onto a virtual field, experience past games, trial virtual game scenarios or play against virtual opponents.

But it not just technology that improving, so is the human body and our understanding of it as everyday we learn more about how the human body and the mind and come ever closer to discovering answers to why some people are better athletes than others, why some train better and how our bodies perform best and recover fastest and the answers to these and a myriad of questions are starting to find their way back into our athlete training regimes and on to the fields.

And while we’re looking ahead, how about using genetic coding to find potential great athletes and even breeding them in the womb to become tomorrow’s sporting superstars?

The Fans

Getting up close and personal with the action has never been more possible than it is now and in the future it will only get better.

Live omni-channel coverage will continue to find its way onto all of our devices and we will be able to readily switch from one to the other, wherever and whenever.

Technology will also make experiencing the action from a players perspective totally ordinary as you get to not only see and experience the action but also feel it just like the athlete does. This haptic technology comes through a vest you put on that lets you feel, in real-time, the on ground tackle, sense the player tension and feel the game from a players perceptive.

We will increasingly be able to call for replays, watch that tackle or kick over and over again from any angle and as time progresses even play it again using a first person player perspective perhaps taken from a player or referee wearing a jersey with a built-in FirstV1sion camera that will then let you play out your fantasy what if scenario’s and even include yourself in the virtual on field action.

Tomorrow’s fans will also come in a whole lot of different shapes, sizes and genders as the professional world of sports begin to chase after the female and young viewers knowing that if they are going to grow their fan bases and revenues in the next few decades their going to have to go for wider appeal.

With a long time understanding that future sport fans are determined by their early exposure of watching a team and playing a sport, expect to see more being done with junior leagues and more opportunities for female participation and women’s leagues in what have been predominantly male bastions.

The road for sports will continue to be based on human activity (although we will see some new digital and robot sports arise), but it will, as so many things are becoming, be ever more reliant and driven by technology and the digital world of tomorrow.

So have a listen now and then share your thoughts on tomorrow’s sporting world.